The Importance of Smiles in Therapy

Malcolm and Simone share their approach to maintaining a positive work-life balance as a married couple running a business together. They explain how framing mundane activities as fun helps create happy memories. Acting cheerful even when alone reinforces emotions. Avoiding compromise and aligning on shared goals prevents conflicts. Modeling happiness teaches it to kids. They disagree on meds but research to find truth. Not fearing death removes constant dread. Starting every conversation cheerfully sustains the mood. Ultimately you choose whether to view life negatively or positively.

Malcolm: [00:00:00] So we're going to do a video today on work life balance, which you can see with a kid home from school. It was pink eye. I got terrible pink eye today too. That's the one thing they don't tell you about being a parent. You're going to be sick 24 seven, right?

Simone: Octavian? I actually started a spreadsheet to track the number of days that all of us are sick.

Simone: So every time someone gets sick, I track the dates. Cause I want to see ultimately like how many days out of the year. Someone in our family is sick because I legit think that it's like quite a few days. I think it's about a quarter. A quarter?

Malcolm: I'd say it's about a quarter of the year.

Simone: Yeah it might even be more than that.

Simone: It might actually be more like a third. So we can report back on that one. But despite being sick, I would argue that we still really have a lot of fun. And that I expected that as a parent, we would be a lot more stressed out and unhappy. Because everyone talks about how like marriage is hard work and having kids is hard work.

Simone: . [00:01:00] But in the end, I think that it's actually pretty fun and seamless. But I think that a lot of that has to do with framing. So something that we do a lot with our kids when we need them to be excited about something is we play a hype game, essentially, where we will take something really mundane, like an airport shuttle bus, and we will frame it as the most fun, the most amazing thing in the world.

Simone: So let's say that we need to get through a really rough travel day with lots of transfers. We will hype up the airport shuttle at the end of that day to get to a parking lot like it is the coolest thing in the entire world.

Simone: And it works like crazy. Like we, we talk about it all day. Oh my gosh, we get to do this thing. And then we actually get to the airport shuttle bus. We're like, this is the best thing ever. And I think that one of the tricks to making a really heavy work schedule work with family, with a spouse, with whatever is playing the [00:02:00] hype game with everything.

Simone: So no matter what you're doing, you make it fun. You make it fun.

Malcolm: I the hide game with you and how much you're already doing this to yourself, whether you realize it or not.

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Malcolm: So think about like a marriage, right? People are like the day I was married to you was the happiest day of my life. And it's like, why?

Malcolm: Like you knew you were going to get married well before that day. That's not like you just found out you were going to get married that day. It's a ceremony. They're not very fun ceremonies. Yeah,

Simone: it's a pretty stressful day.

Malcolm: Yeah, you're sitting there you're likely last minute making sure you've memorized your vows so you say them right, you're trying to project a certain self image to the crowd.

Simone: Are you just trying to keep all your guests happy and deal with, all the logistical nightmares that are coming up with whatever catering people needing stuff, et cetera.

Malcolm: I think this is true of beaches, for example, right? Oh God, miserable. [00:03:00] Oh, You'll go to a beach. It's hot.

Malcolm: They're drinking alcoholic beverages in the hot sun, often reading a book that they could be reading at home, or laying down, burning themselves, giving themselves cancer. I don't know, I don't know why people still do that. That seems like it's not even like a trend anymore. But the question is why?

Malcolm: What are you getting out of doing that differentially, right? It's that society has told you that this is a fun thing to do and that is where you are getting happiness from the event. And you can change what is a fun thing to do if you create new narratives for yourself. So we can say, some people are like, Oh, that's really sad that you turn, your business trips into little mini honeymoons or family vacations or whatever, right?

Malcolm: For you and your spouse. Cause you work together. And it's like, why? We, we section life into fun and not fun time, but you can make all of life fun [00:04:00] time if you create the right story for yourself around what you're doing and the people around you are helping you continue to generate this delusion.

Malcolm: And you might be like that's not real fun. That's a delusion. Everything, this whole game, this whole life you're living, the emotions you feel they're delusion generated by the narrative society has created for you, or the pre evolved emotional responses that you have because your ancestors who had those responses had more surviving

Simone: offspring.

Simone: And I think a really influential moment for you in your life around this hype machine game. was for watching an Addams Family movie, where

Malcolm: there's this we've talked about that in another video, so I don't want to go too deep on this

Simone: concept. Yeah, but there's a scene in which Morticia is cutting the tops, the blossoms off of roses, and admiring this bouquet of thorny branches, essentially.

Simone: And it just, it's this perfect moment encapsulating how it is up to you, in your mind, to decide whether something is positive or negative, whether you [00:05:00] enjoy it or not. And you can choose to do that with everything. And honestly, we're not as good as it is. We're not as good at it as we should be.

Simone: Like I should be more like recently, for example, our son Octavian isn't with pink guy. I'll come got pink guy. I should have been like, Oh, this is a great opportunity for us to spend more time together and have a special day with Octavian. And instead of Oh no, like how are we going to handle the logistics, the calls?

Simone: Oh, how do we do this? How do we keep Octavian happy? And I think that really what was a missed opportunity every time also is if you were in a working relationship where you fail to spend time together and turn it into something really special and fun and enjoyable, that's a failure on your part.

Simone: But I think many marriages also fall apart for that same reason that when stuff happens, it doesn't matter if it's good or if it's bad. The couple or one partner chooses to view it negatively. And that can honestly happen with really good things. Like maybe a spouse gets an amazing job opportunity and they get to move into a much better house in an [00:06:00] amazing city.

Simone: That spouse is like, Oh, I don't want to leave home. This is horrible. Or you've

Malcolm: created this power imbalance, yeah, no I, I. Absolutely agree. That was in every moment. And this also really colors how we see emotions, why we see indulging in positive emotions is really negative.

Malcolm: But we also really culturally shame was in our family. The idea of indulging in negative emotions, because if I come to Simone one day and I'm in a bad mood. I'm hurting her. I am hurting our kids. I am hurting everyone I interact with that day. And at the end of the day, a bad mood is often a choice.

Malcolm: Yeah. Unless you're like have major depressive disorder or something like that. And then, there's pharmacological solutions. There, there might be pharmacological solutions. But generally, if we're talking about like just general bad moods. Most of them are a choice and there's something that we can change due to how we believe [00:07:00] that we are interacting with reality.

Malcolm: That the framings that we have of the world and that is, is why I think. even though our wider philosophy says emotions don't matter in part because emotions don't matter. And because a bad mood makes everyone less efficient, there is never an excuse to be in a bad mood.

Malcolm: And this is a really interesting thing with cultural groups that do believe emotions don't matter because this is something throughout them. For

Malcolm: example, you've got the Opus Dei when I, the Opus Dei is a Catholic sect, the Evoke set that a lot of people have about them is, oh, they're the ones who whip themselves, right? Famously a character from the Da Vinci Code was an Opus Dei member, like one of the bad guys. And so people see this as gruesome or something.

Malcolm: But the reality is that it is a mandate for every Opus Dei member. The reason they whip themselves, the reason they flagellate themselves is to learn better emotional control. The reason they have that mandate is because they have a mandate in all of their interpersonal interactions with other people to [00:08:00] be happy and be the Opus Dei that a lot of people don't know.

Malcolm: Generally cultural groups that see emotional control as a mandate. See it as part of that mandate to always try to be as chipper as possible which creates a lot of people are like, yeah, but if you don't indulge in your negative emotions and they'll come out in other weird ways and it's no, they don't.

Malcolm: The study will always say, and I'll say this till it's a blue moon because people need this beaten into them is that when you do something like if you're mad and then afterwards you go punch a bag, it has been shown that will make you more mad and you will get more mad in the future. Indulging in a negative emotion makes that negative emotion worse always, and it makes it easier to feel that negative emotion in the future.

Malcolm: If you, however, just choose not to view things negatively and you experience very little negative emotions, it's like not having that first vomit, you will be less likely to throw up afterwards and don't break the seal. [00:09:00] Don't break the seal. Don't break the seal. Hold in all those positive emotions.

Malcolm: Because I think, in our daily life, do we experience that many negative emotions? I don't really see you.

Simone: No, actually. I started using a mood tracking app called Dailio, just to see, how my moods are now, actually even when we're stressed out about stuff, like we do all right we're pretty even keeled, like you would expect for our value set, which is pretty encouraging.

Simone: But I also think that we are actually a lot more happy go lucky than people would expect per our value set. But again, I also think here's another thing that we do that I think really makes a big difference in, in our perceived happiness and in our experience in life and also our stress levels, quite frankly, is.

Simone: We will do stuff that is actively uncomfortable or act a certain way while doing something. Even when we are uncomfortable, we will act really happy [00:10:00] and then take a bunch of photos of it and record everything as happy. And then when we are, we have like little playback albums of recent photos like throughout our house or on our phones and stuff.

Simone: And when we look at those. Our memories end up being of, Oh, that was so happy we're such happy people.

Malcolm: This is like the day on a beach phenomenon, right? Which is yeah I might be miserable all day in the hot sun on a beach, but I want to take a number of pictures of me smiling, and then that helps record it in my narrative, like my internal history.

Malcolm: That I enjoyed that day and I will believe I was happier and this can actually have a really positive effect on Relationships with your spouse your kids. Yeah, are you showing them the picture you made?

Simone: Wow,

Malcolm: buddy What is it

Malcolm: of? A little zombie Show it again.

Malcolm:

Malcolm: Because when you believe that your partner is somebody who makes your mood better, you will like being... Oh, hold on, hold on, [00:11:00] hold on, hold on, hold on, let me get you go. Thank you, buddy. You are a nice boy.

Malcolm: You are a nice boy, my friend. You are a nice boy. You You are a nice boy. And I think, so there's two things to this. One is, like that interaction. People have been asking, like, why are your kids always happy and polite? And I think it's because they just don't have a lot of modeling of other ways to emotionally react to people.

Malcolm: And I think that's really important in terms of what you teach kids. The emotions and the ways that you treat the people around you is the way that they are going to learn to treat the people around them. But to the other point I was saying, the reason you create these false narratives, even if, we had a bad day at the airport or something like that we got stuck at the airport all day and so it's okay rounding the kids, very stressful, we could miss our flight, are we gonna get one, but let's do some video of us having fun, right?

Malcolm: Because when I believe that my partner makes my life better, that's going to make my relationship more stable [00:12:00] and I will show her more regular gratitude throughout the day, which makes her feel better and creates a positive feedback loop. The moment one partner begins to believe that a relationship is...

Malcolm: Is a negative thing for them. It's really quick to get in a negative feedback loop where they're not treating the partner, the way the partner wants to be treated, then the partner doesn't treat them the way they want to be treated. And it is just so hard to break out of that cycle. Alternatively, you can have sort of a cycle of positivity that is remarkably easy to create.

Malcolm: Now, a few side notes here. Okay. One is we're cheating. So it's important to remember that everybody has a happiness set point. Yeah. And what that means, and there's been studies on this, if you win the lottery or if you get a major injury, become an amputee, yes, your happiness will go down for a short period.

Malcolm: Largely, it almost always goes back to about where it is. Everyone has about the same level of average happiness. And I think I just have a really high happiness set point. [00:13:00] And that could also explain why my kids are so chipper. It could be that we are just have a genetically high happiness set point.

Malcolm: Most people in my family are really happy people. And we pass this on to our kids. And so they're just cursed with happiness all the time. What are your thoughts on that, Simone?

Simone: I would say we've definitely seen in our kids that they have different happiness set points. Some are happier than others.

Simone: But yeah, definitely modeling how you react. I would also say that you, the way that you personally choose to react to things, 100% feeds off the other person. So when one of us accidentally gets into a bad mood, like we miss a night of sleep or, One of us is in a lot of pain for some reason, and then, that leads to us being, like, not reacting to something in a positive way.

Simone: It definitely gets the other person in a negative mood. So I do think that there are both virtuous and vicious cycles that are created.

Malcolm: I think also cosplaying wholesomeness as a family. It does make sense to expend some time on that, even when it's not of immediate utility. This [00:14:00] season we've got fireflies out in the field.

Malcolm: field that we stay up later than we otherwise would to sometimes go out, catch fireflies together with the kids or go berry picking. There's lots of raspberries and wine berries out this season. And we're doing that and we're expending the time doing that even though it's not efficacious in the moment because it helps create this narrative for ourselves.

Malcolm: Which makes us, I think, appreciate our relationship and our family more. And it creates a narrative that I think our kids will also remember growing up, that I had a picture of an ideal

Simone: childhood. I also want to add a refining point here and an important one, because what we're describing here obviously is acting you, you should dress for the job you want.

Simone: Like we act for the life experience we want, but I think a lot of people hear that they hear okay, so I'm just going to pretend it. And there's that implies that there's also a period where you start acting like yourself. And I think a really core rule here is no. You never act like yourself.

Simone: There's the stereotype of there's this, celebrity [00:15:00] couple and they act like everything's perfect. And then the moment the cameras stop rolling, the moment the photographer steps away, they're immediately snapping at each other. Like the moment the guests leave, they're fighting, they're yelling at their kids.

Simone: This is shown all over the place in media, maybe it happens sometimes in reality, but for us if we are alone, like I am alone let's see, there was this other night, like two nights ago, there was this night where I was cleaning up after the kids and I was wearing our infant on my back and she just vomited like It just felt five gallons of milk down my back at the same time that our younger toddler decided it would be really fun to spill his milk all over the floor.

Simone: And at the same time that Octavian thought it would be really fun to, to throw food all over the place. And I'm just like, just like I'm feeling the warm goop like roll down my like pants, like this is a bad moment, but I'm like still acting chipper in the moment. Malcolm, you weren't there.

Simone: I was performing for [00:16:00] absolutely nobody. I was acting cheerful, but there is no time where you're off, period. It's

Malcolm: very important to note that there have been studies on this. If you smile, you will report feeling happier. If you even just say words that cause you to

Simone: smile more. Oh, I actually think the pencil study, and this is one in which they had people put like a pencil in their mouth.

Simone: I think that wasn't replicated. We'll say that there are caveats, but I think that there are lots of studies.

Malcolm: But I think the preponderance of evidence in the research says, That acting as if you are happy or acting as if you are having a wholesome moment with your family will make you feel a wholesome moment with your family.

Simone: Yeah. Even if you have a, an inclination not to feel, and of course conversely, indulging in anger, indulging in sadness, is going to make it worse. Which is, of course, why we think it's so toxic, and why we have other episodes talking about how modern therapy is a cult, all of these narratives.

Malcolm: It's also, something we do with our kids, I'd be very careful not to tell my kids that they're sad people, or that they're... Tell your kids you're a happy person, you're a good boy, [00:17:00] right? Because they will internalize that and act like that. But adults do the same thing. We build these narratives about who we are, and then that determines how we act to the people around us.

Malcolm: Okay, so side note on all of this that we find very perplexing and I'd love it if our audience could help us think through because it's always been one of the big mysteries to me and every now and then I'll have a little breakthrough on it.

Malcolm: It's nightclubs. Okay, I went to nightclubs a few times as a kid and then I went back recently. I was on this trip to Latin America with a bunch of teal fellas. And I was like, okay, I'm going to go back. I'm going to observe this. Maybe I'll find some fun at it that I didn't see before. It was hellish.

Malcolm: Nothing about this experience to me evokes any sort of positive emotional state. You may be able to find a partner at it, maybe like some sort of romantic partner, but there's got to be more efficient ways with less cost. You're there late at night. You are sweaty, everything is overpriced, so every moment I [00:18:00] feel like I'm being scammed and I'm just annoyed.

Malcolm: People are like spilling drinks on you, the music is loud, it's actively painful. I guess it could be some sort of group bonding ritual that's meant to create some sort of hormonal thing in someone's head, like almost inducing the effects of a drug. Or like a mini to mini bonding ritual, but then why are you doing that with people you don't know?

Simone: Are you

Malcolm: just trying to languish in like a certain emotional subset? I guess I don't understand it. Maybe these people have some narrative around nightclubs making them happy that I don't have and so they're building memories that nightclubs are making them happy or maybe they're really gaining something from the experience.

Malcolm: What are your thoughts about

Simone: my thoughts of it? For some types of people, there's some kind of religious or like mind altering experience of Dancing at a really large, like loud environment with a lot of people like moving in unison and like just the intense overstimulation of that and then the group cohesion of the moment probably creates some kind [00:19:00] of mind altering state that is intoxicating for some types of people.

Simone: So you think it's like an intoxicant

Malcolm: that we don't feel for whatever?

Simone: Exactly. Yeah. It's like some drug that we sometimes can't process. Like we don't have receptors for it. So everyone else is like dosing on it and they're like. Ah, and we just can't, we don't get it.

Malcolm: Could be.

Simone: I think, so if we're addressing the subject of our work life balance and how we handle it, I think we also have to address the constant question that we get from people or like statement, which is, Oh, I could never imagine working with my spouse.

Malcolm: Oh yeah. That's a weird thing. I, it just seems like from our life, just so weird to say, why would you marry someone if you don't want to be around them all the time?

Simone: Yeah that and there's this assumption that what about when you have a disagreement that like, you will not be able to work together if you disagree on something.

Simone: And I think that's to us when we hear that from someone that basically says to us, you really shouldn't be married because if you do not have shared values and a [00:20:00] shared vision that you have aligned around. That means that you are not sustainable. Like you are not stable. That means that you're both just in it for yourselves and leaning out of the relationship.

Simone: Typically if an aligned couple has a conflict, the conflict is in that each of you have a different hypothesis around how to best maximize what matters to you collectively as a family. Malcolm might think that it would be better for everyone to buy uniforms for some project and I might think it's better that no one has uniforms because I think that will make them more efficient and whatever, and it costs less and so we both want the same thing, which is, for that project to succeed or something.

Simone: We just have very different ideas on how it is best executed. And there are ways around that, right? One can run tests. One can try one method. One can do all sorts of things to figure out where the truth may be. Whereas I think for many other relationships, there's this expectation that there will be...

Simone: It's

Malcolm: compromise. Compromise is the most toxic thing you can have in a relationship. What you're looking for is the correct answer, not the answer that's in between the two people. But I think a lot of [00:21:00] people are purely motivated either by hedonism or by satisfying some sort of self narrative. And both of those things...

Malcolm: You can have differentiations between the couple where there is like systemic differences that can't be resolved. If you're both optimizing for your own hedonism, then yeah, there is potential systemic disagreement. Whereas if you're optimizing for, specific outcomes for the world it's very rare that we have any sort of sustained disagreement.

Malcolm: What are our sustained disagreements right now, Simone? I'm trying to think.

Simone: One of them actually like over time for a long time has been on like whether or not we would support our kids taking something like Adderall. Oh yeah, I'm very supportive

Malcolm: of it and she's very against it.

Simone: However. I decided to research the subject more, right?

Simone: Because what we want is the best outcome for our kids. So it's not like I'm anti drug and he's pro drug. It's that I was concerned that if our kids take drugs like Adderall to do well on tests, to do tasks that are really hard to focus on, [00:22:00] that as adults, they will not feel empowered to focus on things independently.

Simone: And Malcolm's saying, listen. Sometimes you just have to take these things to be able to get through it because if you don't like you just won't like,

Malcolm: Like you won't succeed and I think she has an enormous and with superhuman ability to focus on things. Yeah.

Simone: I'm like someone who doesn't need it.

Simone: Who's, I'm, or I'm like a wealthy person being like, why can't you just buy your way out of the problem? Yeah. Which is. is silly. So what I ended up doing, and this I guess is probably a pretty good illustration of how an aligned couple will disagree on something, is I went out and I looked for more information on, okay, actually what are the long term effects of drugs like Adderall.

Simone: And I now have a more nuanced understanding from the research of when it's actually appropriate. So it looks like for people who are diagnosed with ADHD, like they are shown to have significant attention problems, taking Adderall or drugs like basically focus medications, whatever, like the best, like time released one [00:23:00] is these days, it's like least addictive or habit forming.

Simone: Taking one of those actually helps to build the sort of connective pathway in your brain that would enable you to learn how to focus without that medication as an adult. And

Malcolm: this goes to everything we've been saying in this. When you act out any emotion or any behavior pattern, it becomes easier to access in the future, even if the way you're acting it out is pharmacologically assisted.

Simone: Yeah. And so I was hearing that and I was like, at first I was like, wait, what really? But then also I've done a lot of research on psychedelics, for example. And it's also seems to be found that if you've done a lot of psychedelics, you can reach similar states after taking them just from meditation alone, because essentially your brain has walked that path.

Simone: It's like taking a machete and cut and more easily. walkable trail. So you can get there without the assistance in the future. So now my view is very different. I think what my stance is on our disagreement now is if our children, if we [00:24:00] have children who are diagnosed with ADHD and I'm pretty sure we will that yes, indeed, we should give them those medications for use in very specific.

Simone: Applications when they really need it to do rigorous tests and stuff. But we should not give it to any child we have who is not diagnosed with it because it could create this feeling of dependency. Like I can't focus without it. Does that make sense?

Malcolm: We'll see. Am I, our general takes on our body is one of our recent tweets is saying, thank God our bodies are disposable.

Malcolm: That's what it is to be a pronatalist. It's a fundamentally belief that my body is disposable. My kids are the next better iteration of me and their kids will be the next better iteration of them. And so I think it makes us a little loosey or goosier with performance improving medications.

Malcolm: That other people who are like my body's a temple might be, burn the Blade Runner quote, the flame that burns twice as bright, burns half as long for them, I would say just do whatever increases your

Simone: efficiency. Yeah, but Malcolm, don't forget for a hot [00:25:00] second that we're also incredibly frugal people and that these medications cost a lot of money and dependencies cost a lot of money.

Malcolm: Our kids are gonna have to find a way to pay for it if they

Simone: want it as a sustaining income. I know, but I'm just saying a life in which you don't need to pay for something is going to be easier than a life in which you feel like you do, and then more things you feel like you have to pay for.

Simone: Cookie, consider the fact that neither you nor I is addicted to caffeine. Think about the thousands of dollars we've saved. How many sodas do you think I drink a day? Okay, I'm not addicted to caffeine. How many thousands of dollars? I know, genuinely, I

Malcolm: must drink

Simone: 20 a day? Okay, fine. You are into caffeine.

Simone: People, you know they see me

Malcolm: drinking

Simone: these on camera. But also, I know how much you spend on Coke Zero, and it's a lot. It's a lot of money. So I'm just saying like the less you have of that in your life, the better. So we have to balance our collective values, frugality, but also performance. And yeah, we don't really care, bodies are disposable, bring bright, die young, whatever, [00:26:00] have kids first, whatever, raise them successfully.

Simone: But yeah, that is how we navigate agreements, right? Like our discussions aren't like, Oh, you're hurting my, you never listened to me.

Malcolm: I just don't think this is right. This is another point, the burn, break, die young part of our worldview that perhaps makes it very easy for us to be pretty happy most of the time is that we really genuinely are not worried about death.

Malcolm: I am worried about dying before I'm able to put my kids in a good position in life, but I'm not worried about death and more generally. And I feel like people who have this attachment to their mortality. They probably feel more like a, dagger dangling above them by a thread their entire life, right?

Malcolm: I can understand why it would create this sort of fear of I don't know, the other? I don't know. It's a constant threat. You can die at any moment, right? I guess it's something that's hard for me to model because I'm not really afraid of dying. I'm not really, [00:27:00] I'm afraid of my kids dying, but I guess that's not like an ever present fear for me because we're gonna have a lot of kids. If I had two kids, I'd be really afraid of them dying. But

Simone: You don't, I'm terrifi of anything bad happening to anyone who I love. Or honestly anyone. I don't want bad things to happen to anyone, but no, yeah, maybe our mortality, maybe actually the fact that we fully embrace our mortality encourages us to enjoy the moment that we have at any point.

Simone: But I, I think that's more like hippie dippy nonsense. And then we just understand that because we want to maximize our objective functions. We perform better when we're not depressed and demotivated. And so we know that we have to find some way to max out our feelings of happiness. Both individually, but especially as a couple.

Malcolm: But it's so weird to me that you wouldn't think that should be pharmacologically

Simone: assisted. Then why aren't you constantly on something?

Malcolm: Because I don't need to be. But when I was younger, I had a harder time focusing. And I needed to be this.

Simone: I think you actually have ADHD.[00:28:00]

Malcolm: This is an important thing to know is the relationships you have can make things much easier for you.

Malcolm: So when I say, when I was younger, I had a hard time focusing. One of the things where my brother's this is the best sign of your guy's relationship. Before I met Simone, I had a problem with grinding my teeth in my sleep and I had to wear a night guard. And I think it was due to just like constant stress of looking for a wife, not having met that stage yet, but also just in general with my day to day life.

Malcolm: Because I started grinding my teeth in early high school, right? And that's when I really started trying to put my nose to the grindstone and sure I got into a top tier college and sure I got into a top tier graduate school. Start my career well, so I was really on full blast after that point in my life.

Malcolm: And after I started dating Simone, within the first year dating you I, it used to be if I didn't wear my night guard for a night, my, my teeth would start cracking. And you can even see some lines, I did real damage. I broke off parts of my teeth that have now been... Don't do this to me! No! But now, not once since we've been in a relationship have I ground my teeth.[00:29:00]

Malcolm: And maybe it's just I so feel like I, someone has my back, that I'm dealing with incredibly low levels of stress in my daily life, which makes things much easier, and it's created the illusion for you that I have always been this emotionally calm. When it's really more something that has been created.

Malcolm: Because I have so little fear of any sort of betrayal from you or any sort of... Even things could hit me in the back because I've got another pair of eyes looking for me.

Simone: I would imagine that the mGTOW slash red pill community be like of course she has your back that's the easiest way for her to stab you AWALT.

Simone: AWALT!

Malcolm: All women are

Simone: like that! I will destroy you Malcolm when you least expect it. No but like seriously I think that's It's one of the most romantic things that you've ever said that like I could make your life that great because when I learn, about hard things that have happened to you before I met you, I just like desperately want to travel back in time and give you a hug.

Simone: And at [00:30:00] least I can help that younger person by making your life a little better now. But golly, yeah, I would say working with you is amazing and it's specifically amazing because we choose to make it amazing. It's our version of yes, and, except it's just yes, and it's awesome.

Simone: Yes, and we're loving it. Yes, and

Malcolm: every moment is awesome. And that's actually one final thing that I note on this. A lot of people are surprised that I start every conversation with a, Hey, how's it going? It's great to be chatting with you. People will notice this on interviews with me or things, and it's like a thing.

Malcolm: And they're like, why do you do that? And because I have trained myself to always start every conversation on an emotional high note, it's much easier to maintain this emotionally positive high note throughout the entire conversation. Yeah. We have an evoke set of the ways that we respond to people. And when you ensure that evoke set is just this very easy, positive message like, Hey, how's it going?

Malcolm: It's great to be talking today. It makes it very easy to maintain this positive [00:31:00] emotion. And if anyone was going to take any one thing away from this, I think that's an easy thing to do. Yeah.

Simone: You know what I'm really excited for now? Dinner! Yes! Me

Malcolm: too. Are you going to serve some food for me? Do

Simone: we have ground beef left?

Simone: Yeah, I have about 150 grams of 93% lean ground beef that I want to sauté for you with some onions and butter. Yeah.

Malcolm: Please do, extra butter and yeah, sauté with some onions and a jalapeno.

Simone: And a jalapeno, and then steam some rice, and you'll add the spices after you get back with the kids, yeah?

Simone: We'll add the tomatoes

Malcolm: when I get back, yeah.

Simone: Okay, perfect. Alright, we're on. Love you! too, gorgeous.

[00:32:00]